Din Minimi: The Strange Story Of An Armed Group In Aceh, Indonesia ©2015 IPAC 1 No Need for Panic: Planned and Unplanned Releases of Convicted Extremists in Indonesia ©2013 IPAC 1 DIN MINIMI: THE STRANGE STORY OF AN ARMED GROUP IN ACEH, INDONESIA 15 October 2015 IPAC Report No.23 contents I. Introduction .........................................................................................1 II. Din Minimi: Background ...................................................................2 A. The Beginning ...............................................................................2 B. The Crimes Attributed to Din Minimi ......................................3 C. The TNI Killings ...........................................................................4 D. The Police and Military on Different Paths ...............................5 III. Din Minimi’s Demands ......................................................................6 IV. The Connection to Teungku Mukhtar and the Norway Group ...7 A. Mukhtar and the Extremists .......................................................7 B. Involvement of a GAM Splinter Group? ...................................8 V. Conclusion ...........................................................................................9 Din Minimi: The Strange Story Of An Armed Group In Aceh, Indonesia ©2015 IPAC 1 I. INTRODUCTION Ten years after a much-lauded peace agreement ended a 30-year insurgency in Aceh, a peculiar armed group has emerged there with ties to former rebels, petty criminals and violent extremists as well as to intelligence and security forces. Indonesia has a history of such groups appearing in conflict areas, and it is often difficult to figure out who is using whom for what ends. Even by In- donesian standards, however, the story of Din Minimi is convoluted. It serves as an illustration of many problems in Indonesia today, including hostility and competing agendas among securi- ty forces, as well as lax control over high-risk offenders in prison. It also shows the potential for more serious violence in Aceh. Din Minimi, Aceh’s supposedly most wanted outlaw, first came to media attention in 2014 after he had been involved in a number of robberies and extortion attempts. Two journalists were invited to his “camp” in North Aceh, facilitated by a civil society activist. Din Minimi gave them a long interview, based on talking points prepared by the activist: how the current Aceh government had not fulfilled the provisions of the 2005 Helsinki peace agreement and how it was failing to bring prosperity to the people of Aceh. It had failed to meet its promises of free homes and land for former combatants. The target of criticism was clearly Partai Aceh, the party formed by the former rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM) whose senior members include the governor of Aceh, Zaini Abdullah, and his deputy, Muzakir Manaf, former GAM military commander and Partai Aceh head. It seemed as though Din Minimi was one of innumerable disgruntled former combatants who had turned to crime and just happened to have the good fortune to run into people with an interest in boosting his exploits. As media attention grew, so did groups with an interest in using him, either to weaken the Partai Aceh government, raise the spectre of renewed conflict or build an armed force to wage jihad. (The last, it should be noted, has never been Din Minimi’s own objective.) In late 2014, two groups linked to each other by little more than a telephone connection reached out to Din Minimi. One consisted of an Acehnese living in Norway who belonged to a GAM splinter called MP-GAM. The other was a group of Acehnese extremists who had been involved in an effort to set up a terrorist training camp in Aceh in 2010. Together they helped strengthen his little band of armed men, with the Norway resident providing funding and the would-be terrorists—two of whom were operating from their cell in Banda Aceh prison—ar- ranging for the purchase and delivery to Din Minimi. For all his bombast against the Partai Aceh government, Din Minimi’s targets for extortion seemed to be drug dealers and corruptors, a few with political links and others with none. Until March 2015, he seemed to be more a criminal nuisance than a serious security threat. In March, however, he and his men executed two military (Tentara Nasional Indonesia, TNI) intelligence agents. The police stepped up efforts to hunt down Din Minimi followers and killed at least two by shooting them at close range under disputed circumstances in July and August 2015. More than 20 alleged followers were in prison as of September, and police said there were about the same number on the wanted list. The TNI, which lost two men, left the hard tactics to the police and tried persuasion instead, with the regional commander (Danrem) himself visiting Din Minimi’s family during Ramadan, bearing gifts, to urge that he surrender. The commander also sent an envoy to him directly with an offer of money if he turned himself in. The provincial commander—and virtually every other senior security official—has also been in direct telephone contact with Din Minimi. The role of the state intelligence agency, BIN, is even murkier. In 2008-2009, a senior BIN official had been involved in an effort to identify the whereabouts of the many guns retained by GAM members after the peace agreement. In the process, he worked with an ex-combatant from 2 Din Minimi: The Strange Story Of An Armed Group In Aceh, Indonesia ©2015 IPAC Bireuen named Abu Razak. Abu Razak joined Din Minimi in 2015 and was in touch with both MP-GAM and the would-be terrorists; he was also present at the execution of the TNI men. It does not necessarily mean that BIN is directly involved with Din Minimi or the image-boosting campaign around him, but any sustained assault on the credibility of Partai Aceh as a ruling party would probably be of interest to the agency. As of late September 2015, circumstances seem to have turned Din Minimi into what he was not at the outset: leader of a well-armed group with a grudge against the state. The police and military were competing to see who would get him first, and whether hardline or persuasive tactics respectively would prevail—a competition that mirrored the efforts to get the country’s other leading fugitive, the elusive extremist leader Santoso, in Poso, Central Sulawesi. Even on the run with his many of his men locked up or dead, Din Minimi was attracting the interest of thugs, pro-ISIS extremists and GAM dissidents, including MP-GAM members beyond the small group in Norway. If nothing else, the story of his rise and likely fall show how much violence lurks beneath the surface in Aceh, ready to be stirred up by a welter of different interests. II. DIN MINIMI: BACKGROUND At first glance, Din Minimi’s story echoes that of many other minor figures in independence struggle whose life was disrupted by the war and who had a hard time making ends meet after the peace. When he first returned to crime, no one took him very seriously. It was a familiar sto- ry for many combatants, who found that post-conflict Aceh had little use for their skills and that in some cases it was easier to get money through extortion and robbery than through salaried employment. Din Minimi’s evolution into a legendary outlaw was the result of many interests besides his own. A. The Beginning Nurdin bin Ismail Amat alias Din Minimi, about 37 in 2015, was born in Keude Buloh village in Julok, East Aceh, the first of four brothers. His father, known as Abu Minimi after the machine gun (mini-mitrailleuse) he carried in the conflict, was a locally prominent GAM fighter who was killed sometime before Soeharto fell in 1998. All of the sons joined the struggle as soon as they were able.1 Din Minimi himself left elementary school after Grade 3 and joined GAM in 1997, though he never held a command position.2 In 2003, he was arrested by the TNI and served about a year in prison in Langsa, Aceh. Sometime after the 2005 peace agreement, he went to work as a forklift operator for a sawmill in East Aceh owned by a former GAM fighter, Anwar alias Teungku (Tgk.) Rabo. He had not been employed very long before the company folded, and he subsequently seems to have picked up work where he could get it. Around 2010 he was employed as a heavy equipment operator at a company called PT Setia Agung.3 Then for a year, 2011 to 2012, he operated a bulldozer for the construction of a drainage project near his home in Julok.4 The contractor was PT Alfaris 1 One brother, Hamdani alias Sitong, was killed in a clash with the TNI in 2004. Another, Mak Isa alias Bukrak, disappeared during the conflict and was never found. The youngest brother, Bahar alias Azhar, is still at large; he was the executioner of the two TNI men in March. 2 “Sosok Din Minimi, Mantan GAM yang Masih Angkat Senjata,” viva.co.id, 18 April 2015. 3 This was the company targeted by a hit squad loyal to Partai Aceh in December 2011. They shot eight workers, killing three, on 5 December 2011 in what proved to be a successful effort to delay Aceh’s gubernatorial election on security grounds. Din Minimi had no known connection to the killings or to the group that carried it out, under the command of a man known as Ayah Banta. 4 “Din Minimi, Sosok Pekerja yang Ulet,” Serambi, 4 June 2015. Din Minimi: The Strange Story Of An Armed Group In Aceh, Indonesia ©2015 IPAC 3 Jaya, a company run by another former combatant from East Aceh named Abdul Hadi, better known as Adi Maros, who had left GAM before the peace agreement and soon developed close relations with both BIN and the military.